


Sapphire

by NoSongUnsung



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Butterfly!Marinette, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Kinda AU, Kwami Swap, abuse of parentheses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-05 20:27:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14626434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoSongUnsung/pseuds/NoSongUnsung
Summary: Wedged neatly between two textbooks and a slim notebook is a small, dark wood box. Marinette pulls it out slowly, and places it onto the desk in front of her. The teen frowns, and brushes its smooth surface with the pad of one finger.(She feels somewhere underneath her sternum the advent of a looming precipice. It weighs down her stomach and sets wings fluttering in her insides; her cheeks flush, though she knows not why.Again, she comes to the place of no return and this time she crosses over-)“Huh,” Marinette says aloud, and flips the box open.-In which Nooroo decides not to be a pushover and Marinette receives the Butterfly Miraculous. Things devolve from there.





	1. Causality: Splintering

The man stands in the center of the room. It is quiet, of course, but the man does not mind. In fact, he quite appreciates it. Silence is a rare blessing these days. It’s a pity he took so long to to value it at its true worth. In Paris, unfortunately, even this silence is only superficial. Beyond the wooden walls of this building, the screeching of car tires and chattering of passersby can be heard, though muffled, entering the building as easily as the sunlight streaming through glass windows. Carefully tended flowers bloom crimson in the window boxes, their bright petals a red blur in the glare of sun rays. Golden streaks of light curve around the dark wood hues of old furniture, blurring soft shady gradients along its planks and casting needle-sharp shadows around its corners.

The man can recall living in places that were truly quiet, when he chooses to. He remembers a place of stone walls and snowfall, of white flakes on curving roofs, of mountains glowing red and gold underneath a glorious sunset. They are painful, the memories, tangled up with shame and regret and sorrow. It would be so easy to let them slip from his old mind, forget his mistakes and let go of the pain. He cannot forget these memories. He will not forget them, the last lingering images of a place that was and will never be again, because that is all there is left and if they cannot be than at least let them not be forgotten. He owes that much. He owes far more than that, but he cannot do anything more.

He bows his head, whether in a gesture of respect or simply out of exhaustion he’s not sure. Master Fu (a name that is his for now, but hasn’t always been) smiles, the expression brightening his lined face in an pleasant fashion. The silence, illusory as it is, is still peaceful and precious, a fleeting moment to be savored at long length. His eyes flicker almost imperceptibly to the old fashioned gramophone on the old-fashioned set of drawers. Its contents remain undisturbed, gathering small amounts of dust that the old man makes a point to clean off every so often. This is good. There are more kinds of quiet than one, and this in particular is to be rejoiced over. He should have known it wouldn’t last.

 

It is dark where Nooroo is, swathed in shadows laid out across the walls and floor like armor; hard, sharp, and concealing. His outstretched wings shiver behind him, stirring the stagnant air in staccato flickers. He doesn’t need to move them, of course, as all his kind have the ability to fly, but it it very cold. The tips of his wings are nearly frozen, at a temperature low enough it burns. The kwami says none of this out loud.

The man in front of him has a face like the shadows, all sharp angles and cheekbones and chin, and his eyes are like chips of stone, revealing nothing. In his palm, he rolls a sparkling purple stone, which flickers through his fingers in a brief flash of reflected light. His suit clings tight to his body, perfectly tailored in a nondescript sort of off-white. His glasses sweep around his eyes like insubstantial wings, stark black on his thin face. With the intimidation rolling of him in waves, he is absolutely terrifying. It is a trait that will serve him well as the Moth, Nooroo thinks as his wings give a particularly violent twitch. It hurts a little, in what could be called his heart, when he thinks of the kind of Moth this man would be. Powerful, yes. But for what end?

“I want that absolute power, Nooroo,” the man growls, his voice surprisingly deep as the civilized tone and carefully enunciated words slip away in favor of raw power and force. “I must have those Miraculous!” 

You cannot have them, Nooroo wants to say, but he is small and broken and bound to the man is front of him whether he likes it or not. “But nobody knows where these Miraculous are!” he responds instead, weakly, his high voice shaking. It isn’t true, but the man does not know that, and deception is one the few freedoms Nooroo has left. He’s good at lying. He has had to be.

“I found you though, my little Nooroo,” the man says, his voice still deep and raw. The man likes it. He will use it more and more as he plays the villain. “Your Miraculous... remind me of its powers again.” Nooroo decides, abruptly, that he does not like this man.

“The Moth Brooch allows you to give someone their own superpowers and to make that person your devoted follower!” he responds, almost on reflex. They all ask this question, each and every bearer. This is the wording most of them have wanted to hear, although Nooroo maintains (somewhere, because he has long since given up) that it’s not strictly accurate.

“And when it comes to luring superheroes, what could be better than creating supervillains?”, the man purrs, lips curling into a not-quite-smile.

“But master, the Miraculous are not meant to be used for evil purposes!” Nooroo protests, the words ringing flat and dull in his mouth. It is, he thinks, true, but none of his Moths have seemed to care.

“I must have this absolute power!” the man in front of his snarls, and Nooroo sees his hands shake furiously, the man losing control of his own body. “Your Miraculous is in my control! I am your master now, and you must obey me.”

Nooroo looks at the man, clothed in cream and red and shaking with rage, and for some reason feels vaguely removed from the scene. The kwami is not terrified. It is still in the tower, very still, clear and sharp and crystal, and the moment drags for a very long time. Nooroo pities the man, suddenly, and it springs up in his small chest without warning as he watches the man shake with rage, fingers curled around a purple stone in the form of a locket. The kwami flickers his wings again, once, in the pale light filtered through purple-white window panes, and finds it in him to resist once more.

“Yes, master,” he squeaks, and were the man at all acquainted with the kwami he would have heard the sarcasm, but he is not and so it passes.

The man pins the brooch to his shirt, and it glints darkly amethyst in the stark rays of light. It hangs heavy at his neck, a physical reminder of everything he’s lost and gained.  
“Nooroo! Dark wings, rise!”

 

Every Moth has been drawn to power. It has been like this from the very beginning. They hunger for it, for its burning strength, for its harsh light. They long for it, value it, above relationships, family, and friends. They are insatiable in this regard, wanting nothing more than absolute power, and stopping at nothing to get it. Some, at least in the beginning, seek power to guard and protect. Some wish to be feared. In the end, Nooroo knows, it does not truly matter. They are all consumed by the flames.

Nooroo was hopeful with his first Moth. The man chosen to be his bearer was tall and broad-shouldered, and his thoughtful eyes nearly always had a smile buried deep within them. The kwami was a little awkward, of course, but they got along well enough. There were adventures, of course, and some romance (although Nooroo didn’t and still doesn’t understand why even his sane Moths throw all sense out the window when it comes to love), and they were heroes, for a while, the two of them.

It was a tragedy, of course, when the man’s family begins to be targeted. 

(from then on, Nooroo tells each one of his Moths to keep their identities secret even from those they love; it’s better that way)

The man threw himself into becoming stronger, better. Nooroo helps him to the best of his ability, because he has learned to care for the family that invites him to their table and the children he plays with (not that he’d admit to it, of course). But it consumed the man, it took up his days and nights, burned his relationships into scraps of charred paper and ashes. It’s all for their good, he tells Nooroo, the light of insanity sparking in his eyes. His family stays with him yet, even as his face becomes less and less recognizable as his features are twisted into fanaticism and his mind falls even deeper into the waters of insanity.

He wakes one day to find his wife and children gone and Nooroo can’t even meet his eyes because the little kwami has known they were leaving for a while now and didn’t tell.

From then on, Nooroo finds that all his masters are destined to be villains.

The second, body broken and bedridden, treats Nooroo like a cruel joke, only a reminder of better times and things he can no longer have (he claws at the world with bodies not his own and strength taken from its rightful owners). The third lusts after knowledge (she tears it from books and rips it from minds). The fifth is a psychopath, the sixth obsessed with revenge, the tenth betrayed by the ones she loves most, the fifteenth a doctor with a penchant for playing God, the twenty-fourth a lifeless widow, and so it goes.

Nooroo slowly but steadily loses all expectations of being a hero again.

He knows the script by now, the lines they all want to hear. He’s perfected it, to some degree, on villain after villain after villain. The words are stale on his tongue, but he says them anyway, eyes lowered, heart aching.

It’s hard to go beyond apathy these days.

It was the forty-third who gave him hope, who put the spark back in his eyes and the energy back into his wings. There’s a villain (not them!) and a city in need of defending, and a love interest, of course, a handsome young man that makes his Moth abandon all rational thought (and Nooroo still doesn’t understand it, but smiles at her because the alternative is tears). She trains him out of his stock phrases and lowered eyes and he almost smiles sometimes (she laughs at him when that happens, to hide the wetness in her eyes)

They were heroes for a while, the two of them. (how Nooroo wishes this were how things were supposed to be)

But it is for naught, and she flails and she fails and she falls (and Nooroo has to wonder whether this is truly the way things have to be and if it has really been his fault every time).

And so he floats before the forty-fourth and can only watch as the old words slip off his tongue (and he hates it hates it so much) - so he stops. And changes the story.

 

Marinette shoves her backpack over her shoulders at the sound of the last bell, exchanging smiles and a tentative (on her part) farewell with Alya, new classmate and potential friend. Her cute pink bag rides heavily against her shoulders, weighed down with textbooks and binders and sheets upon sheets of paper. Marinette groans as the familiar weight settles against the small of her back and pulls up on the straps, grimacing. The school’s large front doors are partially open to the fair weather and soft breeze outside in preparation for the dismissal, and Marinette spares them hardly a flicker of thought as she walks past them into the hustle and bustle of a busy Paris street, the Eiffel Tower at her back.

A truck honks loudly and Marinette starts, falling down the last three stairs and landing on her knee with a thud.

“Whoa, girl,” comes a familiar voice from behind her. “You okay?” A hand lowers into her vision, and Marinette pulls herself to her feet with Alya’s help.

“I’m fine,” she says, shrugging. Alya sends her a tentative grin that wouldn’t look at all tentative on someone less confident.

“See ya tomorrow?” she asks, bright-eyed.

“Definitely,” says Marinette, and Alya heads off with a wave and a smile. Marinette waves back, and heads in the other direction. It’s nice she lives within easy walking distance; makes everything eas-

There is an old man about to get run over, and Marinette doesn’t think, even for a second, as she dives forward and shoves him out of the way (and doesn’t notice, even later, how all the clumsiness fell away in that instant). The two of them hit the concrete sidewalk, winded but safe, as the teenager at the wheel drives away too fast, honking his horn at the pair. Marinette pulls herself up onto her feet, perfectly steady, and offers a hand to the older man. He takes it, and with a huff is soon upright.

“Thank you, miss,” he says with a smile.

 

When it happened, Master Fu was cleaning up - and quickly clasped a hand to his forearm as the turtle medallion on his bracelet burned uncomfortably hot. Wayzz nearly fell out of the air in shock, wings fluttering.

“Did you feel that, Master?” Wayzz asked, a worried look crossing his face.

“You… could say that,” replied Fu, rubbing his wrist. “What happened?”

“The Moth Miraculous… it’s been activated!” the kwami exclaimed, frowning slightly. Fu looked up in shock.

“Someone found one of the lost Miraculous?” he asked, more or less rhetorically. Wayzz nodded anyway, wincing. Master Fu paused, looking again at Wayzz. His voice softened. “What’s wrong, Wayzz? Shouldn’t this be a good thing?”

“...You would not know,” Wayzz said, voice heavy. “Since the beginning, he holders of the Moth Miraculous have always been villains.” Fu bowed his head slightly, then doubled over as the turtle charm burns hotter than it had before (and he can hear his flesh sizzling and pulls it off before he even thinks of the consequences). It stopped, eventually, and Fu looked at the red spot on his arm with some distress. When he looked up, Wayzz is gone, and Fu fumbled to clasp the bracelet around his other arm with clumsy fingers. The kwami reappeared in the same spot, and Fu sighed in relief.

They stay that way for a second, Fu with his arm burned red and Wayzz hovering over the old-fashioned gramophone that holds some of the most powerful objects in the world. Everything changes from here. Everything.

“Hello?” squeaked Nooroo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's actually the Butterfly Miraculous, not the Moth Miraculous but bear with me. It's plot relevant.


	2. Causality: Advent

It had been strange, the way purple bloomed over his vision as he exited this plane. 

The bonds he left behind pull on him. He moves forward anyway, shedding a little more energy with each step as the snapping threads pull bits and pieces of his lifeforce with them. He is still as incorporeal and shapeless as when he was born but he is free.

(he glimpses blue as around him deep purple melts slowly into summer sky)

This universe has not seen an untethered kwami since the world was young, and yet he dares.

As the last ties fall from him, Nooroo feels the tug of the last Guardian (safety and comfort and hard-won wisdom). He follows it, pulling and clawing until he falls back into this world, tired and drained of power but here. 

As he materialized in the small room filled with sunbeams and knick-knacks, Nooroo smiled, because maybe (maybe) he’s started anew.

 

“You are no longer bonded to the Miraculous?” asks Master Fu, confused and elated. The years fell away from him as he gazed intently at the kwami, feeling as young and foolish as he had when he first joined with the Guardians, devouring every bit of knowledge he could get his hands on.

“No,” says Nooroo. The three of them are huddled together in Fu’s back room, Master Fu cross-legged on the floor and the kwamis hovering close. The air shivers with anticipation.

“Your bond to the Guardian won’t hold you much longer, Nooroo. You need a Miraculous,” Wayzz nearly whispers, tense and excited.

“I suppose I do,” the kwami squeaks, his eyes drooping. He bobs in the air like a worn-out man, stumbling to bed. The others are worried for him.

“You’ll need a suitable vessel,” Wayzz states, looking around the backroom with a speculative eye. He doesn’t see much in the way of jewelry, and knows that Fu’s small flat above the shop don’t hold much more. None of it is suitable for a Miraculous.

“I have some jewelry in my shop,” Fu offers. “Just give me a second and we can go into the front room.” He slips into the shop, flips the sign on the drawer to CLOSED and pulls down all the blinds. 

“Over here,” he calls to Nooroo, and pulls open a few drawers under the cash register. “Take your pick,” Fu says, and gestures widely.

The neatly displayed jewelry shines brightly in the stripes of light that fall through the blind slats, with a myriad of colors and textures on display. Nooroo hovers over the contents of the drawers, eyeing a few brooches speculatively. There’s not much, but the haphazard collection harbors a decent amount of variety. Brooches don’t feel right to Nooroo anymore, but he sees a few things in blue that look promising.

“This one,” he decides, and Fu picks up the slender ring (set with a small blue stone that sparkles in the electric light) with a nod of approval.

“Good choice,” he agrees, and lays it on the counter. Nooroo settles on top of it.

“A new Miraculous has not been created for millenia,” Wayzz murmurs, reverent. “What name have you chosen?”

“Butterfly,” Nooroo declares, firmly, closing his eyes.

“Butterfly,” Wayzz acknowledges. Fu nods, and absorbed the name as he should (to be passed down and remembered; never to forget).

“It is so,” the Guardian states. “Do you need anything else?” Fu asks, unsure of what creating a Miraculous entails, exactly.

“No,” Nooroo replies, and a moment later changes his mind. “Yes. Wait…”

“What?” Fu asks, when it becomes clear the kwami wasn’t going to continue. 

(maybe all his masters are meant to be villains)

(maybe this isn’t how it was meant to be)

(maybe (maybe) he’s started anew)

“Find me a good holder, Guardian,” Nooroo asks, unshed tears staining his eyes.

“I will,” Fu promises, and they hold each other’s gaze for a second before Nooroo looks away, and back towards the ring.

The binding is almost anticlimactic in the quiet shop; there is no pomp and circumstance, no light displays, no angel voices. Nooroo is there, and then with a whisper of wind he is gone, and the ring is still there on the counter. Fu picks up the slender band and clasps it between his palms, sparing a glance for the space that Nooroo had occupied a few seconds before. The shop is quiet again, or as quiet as a shop on a Paris street can be.

(he glances at the jewelry box in the next room, banishes the thought, and sets out with a blue-stone ring in an ornate little box.)

 

It’s a brisk fall afternoon in Paris: the streets are bustling, the wind is gusting, and the cool air has just a little bit of an bite to it, promising the long-coming advent of winter. Around them, the leaves are yet green, dangling loosely off tree branches in sprays and cascades of verdant color. Buildings rise from the ground; cutesy storefronts and classy architecture mingle slipshod with touches of modernity - an iron door frame here, a parking meter there - while in the distance residential tenements fade into the background.

“Are you alright, sir?” the slim teenager asks frantically, scratching the back of her neck embarrassedly.

“Thanks to you, young lady,” Fu says, smiling. He discretely looks her up and down with a flick of his brown eyes. She’s the third person to help him up today, but he’d decided the first two weren’t up to being a holder of the Miraculous (the first was self-centered, the second without the inner spark that turns a person to a hero) but the girl in front of him…

His turtle bracelet buzzes lightly against his skin, and Fu looks.

(-nervous, clumsy-)

:I hope he’s alright I’m glad he’s safe:

(she doesn’t think much of herself but Fu can See it.)

:I’m glad I was here what if I wasn’t what if:

(-determined, loyal-)

(there’s a brave soul below the nervous exterior.)

((she’ll inspire so many people))

(-self-sacrificing, courageous-)

(she doesn’t know it yet but she’s a hero.)

Master Fu grins. “What’s your name?” he asks, fixing the teenager with a warm glance.

“M-Marinette,” she squeaks, blushing a little.

“It’s good to meet you, Marinette,” Fu says gravely, slipping a small box into the teen’s purse while she stammers a reply.

“Have a good day, sir!” she calls after him as he makes his slow way down the pavement, wooden cane foot thudding rhythmically on the pavement. He waves at her and continues walking.

Marinette, new-chosen Butterfly, watches Fu walk away for a long, drawn-out moment.

(Have you ever felt like you were on the precipice of a new era? Have you ever gone through the motions of a chance encounter wondering why your actions are weighed down with heavy consequence? The air of an impending shift hovers around Marinette: she does not know why this stranger on the street holds such impetus but she can tell instinctively:

she is now a changed person, and nothing is the same.)

Then the moment is over, and Marinette the teen dashes home in anticipation of the kind of after-school snack only enjoyed by bakers’ daughters.

 

Marinette enters the bakery with the ding of a doorbell, and emerges instantly into a sunlight-speckled showroom. Light sparkles through glass display jars, skims along the rough crusts of baguettes and rolls, and falls in faint squares across the tiled floor. The room has an old-fashioned feel to it, from the intricately patterned floor to the rustic wood-beamed ceiling. The teenager runs her fingers along the painted wood of a display case and walks past the counter and cash register into a brick-walled kitchen, where her father is pulling trays of croissants out of a large oven. He gives her a big smile as she walks in. Several trays of bread already lie cooling on the table in front of him.

“How was the first day of school?” he asks, tossing Marinette a croissant. The teen catches it easily with one outstretched hand and bites off a dainty corner.

“Great, dad!” she responds cheerfully.

“Tell your mother I can work the shop for the rest of the afternoon!” Tom calls after her as she walks through the back of the shop. The stairwell to their apartment two floors up is quiet and well lit, and Marinette’s soft-soled shoes make very little noise on the blue carpet as she ascends past doors that lead into other apartments. The teen cracks open the door to her family’s apartment and enters the main room. Marinette passes through the space quickly, and the furniture blurs into pale shades of pink and peach in the corners of her eyes. She can hear her mother doing the laundry in an adjacent room.

The teen pulls herself up a neat white stepladder and through a trapdoor, emerging into an airy loft lit by window light splashed on fishscale floorboards. The room has been arranged by a keen eye in shades of pink and brown; the arrangement of furniture is pleasing to the eyes. Behind wooden beams, boxes and stuffed animals and fabric swatches are scattered the white wood surface of an extensive desk. Above this particular corner of the room. a cat pillow curls on a loft bed, looking down over a pink rug and a pink chaise. It’s messy, but neater than you’d expect of a teenager’s room. 

A rolling chair sits in front of the cluttered desk and a red paper parasol leans upright against the chaise’s backboard.

Marinette sits down at her desk with a swish of wheels on wood and sets her pink backpack down beside her with a light thud. She leans over to unzip the top of the bag and get started on the one get-to-know-you piece of homework Mrs. Bustier had given out. There’s not much in her backpack at the moment, but she has a few books and-

That’s strange.

Wedged neatly between two textbooks and a slim notebook is a small, dark wood box. Marinette pulls it out slowly, and places it onto the desk in front of her. It’s a little larger than her closed fist and hexagonal in shape. It has a lid that appears (judging by the hinges) to open upwards and is decorated with a design she doesn’t recognize, but does appear to be Chinese in origin. The teen frowns, and brushes its smooth surface with the pad of one finger. It’s about the same size as a jewelry box, so maybe it’s one of those?

(Again, she feels somewhere underneath her sternum the advent of a looming precipice. It weighs down her stomach and sets wings fluttering in her insides; her cheeks flush, though she knows not why. 

Again, she comes to the place of no return and this time she crosses over-)

“Huh,” Marinette says aloud, and flips the box open.

The teen is inexplicably disappointed when all she finds is a ring, for no apparent reason she can divine. Definitely a jewelry box, then. One of her classmates must have put it in her bag by accident, because it certainly wasn’t hers. Probably Alya: Marinette had sat next to her. She’d just return the box tomorrow, and if is wasn’t Alya’s, she could ask around. Marinette, mind made up, reaches out to close the box and return to her homework, but hesitates with arm still outstretched. 

She lowers her hand slowly, and plucks the ring from the box. 

It rests on her palm, and Marinette looks at it for a long moment before slipping it slowly onto the ring finger of her right hand. It fits like it was made for her.

For a brief second in time, Marinette wonders at the strange rightness she feels; then blue light explodes in front of her and the feeling is forgotten.

 

Nooroo unfolds in a nimbus of sky blue light, wings unfurling outward in a celebration of their very existence. It’s always a strange feeling, the sensation of slowing knitting together from nothingness 

(or maybe mingling, quickly, like a drop of food coloring in a glass of water - hitting the plane of existence in an explosion of color and tangibility), and it always leaves him with the urge to stretch every one of his limbs.

He has always materialized with his eyes closed. The first time, it was merely coincidence, a happenstance parallel of birth and beginning. Later, he only wished to preserve the last lingering moment in which he could hope for a better future.

(this time, he does it out of trust, and a more conscious sense of symbolism.)

The kwami hovers for a second, and hopes, and opens his eyes.

Marinette has thrown herself backwards on sheer reflexes and sprawls awkwardly against the wooden desk in a tangle of limbs, breath knocked out of her and hands gripping the wooden surface with a desperate urgency. She gulps in a deep, involuntary lungful of air and lets her gaze be drawn almost inexorably upwards. The teen meets the kwami’s eyes and flails.

“Gah! A bug!” she shrieks, and swings at Nooroo with a textbook.

Nooroo tracks the curving movement of the book with wide eyes, but can’t move. His wings freeze in place. He has trouble breathing. Try as he might, the kwami can’t stop the full-body flinch that shivers through him.

(The thirty-ninth didn’t let him phase through thrown objects. He would stand there and smile and order Nooroo not to dodge-)

Marinette’s arm halts in mid-swing, the textbook inches away from Nooroo’s face. The teen slowly lowers the book to her side and stares at the kwami with wide eyes. Nooroo does not notice. The kwami shelters his head between his wings and shakes. His eyes are closed.

“Are you okay?” Marinette asks, worried. Nooroo does not move, but his wings uncurl slightly and this spurs Marinette into frantic action. “I’m so sorry! Look, I put the book back on the desk. It’s okay!” she blurts out all at once, thrusting her empty hands in front of her with palms spread wide. Nooroo’s wings unfold slowly, and Marinette untenses a little. His eyes are still closed. “You’re alright, I promise!” she whispers, afraid to move.

Nooroo opens his eyes, and looks at the girl in front of him.

(in the moment where his eyes are still foggy, he sees the forty-third there in front of him)

(they had been heroes for a while, the two of them)

(and it hurts, it still hurts)

Marinette sags visibly in relief even as Nooroo does. They make a strange sort of mirror together: both are still a little tight in the shoulders, a little bit on edge. The kwami takes in the girl in front of him, notes the dotted lining of her jacket and the sewing machine behind her on the desk. The teen, on her part, notes in an abstract corner of her mind that the small creature’s wings haven’t flapped for a long time, despite how it still hovers in midair. She feels a little woozy, because this is absolutely not something that is supposed to happen in real life.

“Can you talk?” she ventures, more to fill the empty air than anything else. Disbelief at this whole mad situation leaks into her voice a little, no matter how hard Marinette tries to keep it down (the denial is strong with this one).

“Yes,” Nooroo squeaks, and Marinette’s nervous gaze turns to something a little softer.

“What’s your name?” she asks, gently. She looks up at Nooroo as she slides sideways into a pink flowered chair with a nonchalance that’s only a little bit forced.

“I’m Nooroo,” he says, and smiles, just a little.

“I’m Marinette,” the teen responds, and does likewise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I looked at so many pictures of this apartment you have no idea  
> Seriously, it took me way to long to realize the floor between the bakery and their apartment was actually inhabited by someone else...
> 
> Next up: conversation, school days, and a guest appearance by Hawkmoth!


End file.
